Tuesday, April 12, 2011

driving past

We were driving toward Manzanillo when my Air Force buddy Rob tossed that one out of the blue.

The problem is, I knew exactly what he meant. I occasionally feel that way myself. I have another friend who said something similar on a visit. But he thought he was in The Philippines.

There is something about the tropical Pacific coast of Mexico that starts the search function in the nostalgia file. It happens to me at least twice a week.

And I came across part of the answer on Saturday. My blogger friend, John Calypso, recently bought a house in Puerto Escondido. One of the joys of home ownership is house repairs. In this case, the roof. A palapa roof.

You see them everywhere on both coasts of Mexico. But John gave us a nice history lesson about roof thatching.

It turns out that the familiar Mexican palapa is not Mexican, at all. It is one of the imports the Spanish brought from The Philippines. Another, of course, being the coconut that is not native to Mexico, either.

That helps explain why the thatched roof below looks as if it might be somewhere on Luzon. When it is really just two lots down from my house.

But there is something more. Even when there are no palapas to give visual clues, I still get that feeling.

Enlarge the photograph at the top of this post by clicking on it. That view is on the road to Manzanillo. In fact, the very spot where Rob had his Vietnam flashback -- and where I have the same thought every time I drive over that hill.

Or this photograph. Doesn't it speak southeast Asia to you?

The bare rock hills. The water reflecting the tropical landscape. The jungle vegetation.

Maybe it is as simple as realizing that coastal areas in the tropics are cousins. And that is the reason the Spanish imported the palapa to Mexico.

It is the perfect roof to allow air circulation in humid areas and to keep out torrential rains. Something that Malaysia, The Philippines, Vietnam and tropical Mexico share.

The part about Rob being positive he saw North Vietnamese regulars sneaking through the rice paddy will have to wait for another session.

22 comments:

Kwallekno
said...

I'm not buying the Philippines story about the roofs, you have been to Uxmal, the stone buildings there have many carved in stone thatch roofs. Many other Mayan sites as well-bullfeathers to the Philippine story.

Whenever Husband and I watch a movie set in a tropical jungle, whether Vietnam,Thailand,the Amazon or Mexico we assume it was filmed in Veracruz. We check the credits and invariably we are correct.regards,Theresa

I have been thinking of doing a post on that topic. Apparently, they were first brought to the Colima area, along with Filipino workers to establish plantations. You can still find people around Colima with obvious Filipino heritage.

Ah, but you were not reading closely. Too fast on that comment button.

Calypso (and anthropologists) are not contending that thatched rooves came to Mexico from The Philippines. That would be silly. There are thatched rooves throughout the world -- including Germany and England. What they are saying is that palapa rooves came to Mexico from The Philippines. The distinction is important. The unique construction of the palapa roof with its overlapping folded coconut palm fronds on a horizontal axis is what gives the palapa its character.

And that is one reason we know the provenance of the palapa. The preferred construction material is coconut palm fronds. And, until the Spanish brought the coconut palms (and accompanying Filipinos) to the Colima area, there were no coconut palms in Mexico.

South East Asian or Mexican, palapas (spell checker wanted palates) are still beautiful and I am terribly envious. They beat the snap out of the quarter million dollar, rain soaked, sub-urban dwellings I am surrounded by in Oregon. My day is coming but until then Sr. Algadon, keep 'em coming!!

Close. But you have the substance. "God created war so that Americans would learn geography." But he did not take into account the rest of the world knows geography by where it spends its vacation days.

Interesting in our part of Mexico - one of the joys of RENTING is house repairs - once you take possession of a rental around here (in Xico at the moment) is total maintenance responsibility - no calling the landlord to fix something around here.

The origin of the coconut, Cocos nucifera (40) is much disputed; it was formerly claimed that it originated in the New World because its nearest botanical relatives are located there. Harries (1990, Website 3) argues that its origin lies in Malesia. Zizumbo-Villareal & Quero (1998) in a re-examination of the earliest Spanish sources, argue that it was definitely present on the west coast of Central America in the pre-Spanish era, although they remain agnostic about whether this was a result of human intervention or simply transport by ocean currents.

I think uses and cultivation brought by the Filipinos is more important than the origin

Good point, Scott. The important issue is not the botanical origins, but the use of the coconut palm and its poroducts. I had intended to start this discussion with the full background. However, I ended up backing into it. I still want to do a post on the plantations, though. It is odd that there is not more historical material on the topic.